Feels as if I I have not done this in a long time. The .MOBI. I miss the .MOBI. It was my unique little thing. It was self-serving and gratuitous at times, but if ever I look back at it I find something I would not have remembered, or good ideas.
I guess I should write the story I proposed to that website/mailing list a few weeks ago. I should write. That should be my livelihood. I can do that. Anybody can do that. That is both the appeal and the reason to stay away. I already have a reputation. Maybe I could use a nom de plume, however that is spelled. Palmer Stiles would be it. That is the name my mother said came to her in a dream, clear as anything that ever entered her mind unsolicited. Another word came to her: Volusia. That word came to her decades before our father left us and moved to Volusia county. I remember her remarking on both these words long before they had any genuine meaning in our lives. Dad moved to Volusia county where, I would learn many years later, somebody named Palmer Stiles had been a racecar driver and instructor. How do these names and words come to some people in ways that appear to be meaningful decades later? What is to be made of these words when, in the end, they mean nothing? Nothing would have changed if these words never appeared in our mother’s dreams.
I don’t think she ever knew that someone named Palmer Stiles lived in Volusia County. I mean, I told her one time, via the chat function of an online Scrabble game I used to run. But for some reason she didn’t seem to comprehend what I said, responding with the well-worn story that the name Palmer Stiles and the word Volusia came to her in a dream, and that she knew Volusia’s significance but was waiting on Palmer Stiles. I never bothered telling her again that Palmer Stiles lived in Volusia County and, for all we knew, had crossed paths with my father.
That word flew through my consciousness as would a dying bird still flapping its wings in an attempt at flight. I went to Daytona Beach to meet with the estate attorney. He and my father introduced me to the 800-page Living Trust document, a pile of papyrus which, when executed, contained only about 8 sentences of any relevance. The binder containing these papers was passed around the room, from the attorney to my father, to me, then back to the attorney. The word VOLUSIA clawed its way off of that binder and into the air, sailing into a stilted search for meaning. Why has that word been here all these years, I asked, “here” meaning anywhere.
